http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/15/technology/15online.html
Capitalism on the Cob By DAN MITCHELL Published: April 15, 2006 MICHAEL POLLAN'S new book, "The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals," describes a nation that is the victim of "a plague of corn." The No. 1 legal crop is "the perfect capitalist plant," he said on "Fresh Air" on NPR this week. About a third of Mr. Pollan's book is taken up with corn. It is the "keystone species" of the "industrial food chain" that feeds most of us, he said in an interview with Techdirt.com. America, Mr. Pollan says, has "a national eating disorder." To describe it, the book traces the creation of four meals: one "industrial," two "organic," and one procured by the author himself as a "hunter-gatherer." There are problems with each, but the industrial meal, not surprisingly, is the most troublesome. He traces it from an Iowa cornfield to its final form fast food scarfed down in a moving car. All along that journey, corn wreaks havoc. The overuse of nitrogen fertilizers leads to occasional "blue baby" alerts in Des Moines warning parents that nitrate-loaded tap water could render their babies' brains unable to receive oxygen. Those same fertilizers flow down the Mississippi into the Gulf of Mexico, where they seasonally create a "dead zone" the size of New Jersey that is dangerous to sea life. By virtue of its being "paved over" with corn, Iowa is, in its way, the most developed state in the country, he told NPR. On the market, corn is cheap, Mr. Pollan points out. But the costs to the environment, to the economy, and to the health care system are enormous. "We eat so much corn that, biologically speaking, most Americans are corn on two legs," Bonnie Azab Powell, a journalist, wrote on NewsCenter site of the University of California, Berkeley (berkeley.edu/news). To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/